


Comedown

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Face Slapping, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Guilt, Gunshot Wounds, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resentment, Spoilers for Chapter 58
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1789975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You know what else, Jean? I’m going to be seeing and dreaming about that woman bleeding out and falling for weeks to come. That was what I was dreaming about when you woke me. Because of you. That was <b>your</b> nightmare to take on. I have enough of my own, thank you, and plenty more to come.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comedown

The minute they’re all inside the decrepit warehouse by the river — doors barred, windows already boarded up, horses and cart abandoned more than a kilometer away — Armin’s stomach buckles.

“Excuse me,” he manages to get out before he claps his hand over his mouth and runs to the far end. Both corners are piled with detritus: water-warped furniture, half-smashed crockery, broken tiles, splintered boards. He drags a rusted cauldron off one pile onto the filthy floor, sinks to his knees beside it, braces his hands on the rim, and vomits.

He hasn’t eaten that much to begin with for the last few days, and before long he’s shuddering through dry heaves, throat and nose and eyes on fire from the acid. When he finally straightens, gasping, he feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up.

“Here,” Mikasa says, pressing a handkerchief into Armin’s hand. “Captain Levi told me to give this to you before you end up using your sleeve.” Blood trickles from two shallow cuts on the right side of her face. She looks as exhausted as Armin’s ever seen her. 

He nods, takes the handkerchief from her, and blots his mouth with it. As he crumples it and stuffs it into one of his jacket pockets, he opens his mouth to thank her, but nothing comes out. Instead he starts to shake, sweat breaking out on his forehead and rolling down his face.

Mikasa kneels beside him and puts both arms around him. “You saved Jean’s life,” she whispers. “Got that woman right in the neck, too. I had no idea you were that good a shot. The captain’s impressed. I’m proud of you. Eren would be — _will_ be proud of you, too, when he finds out.”

Armin’s throat seems to have closed up so he just nods. Mikasa continues to hold him. Some minutes later, he finds that he’s able to speak again.

“Mikasa… would you be offended if I wanted to just sit here for a bit, by myself? I need to…” He swallows, tasting bile. “I need to think.”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine. You’re doing better than Jean is right now.” She bares her teeth as she speaks Jean’s name the second time. A spark of rage flares in Armin’s chest, then gutters out immediately in a wash of remorse and fatigue. “Sasha and Connie are doing only a little better than you are.”

She stands and squeezes his shoulder, then turns around and heads back to the other end of the vast, echoing space. At this distance Armin can just discern the shapes of the others. The short figure in motion, the only figure in motion, is obviously Captain Levi. A pair huddles on the floor together: Sasha and Connie. 

And a tall figure sits with his arms around his drawn-up knees and his face buried in them. 

This time the spark of anger burns longer and hotter. It dies out only when Armin feels too enervated to sustain it further. And then a sequence of images appears before his eyes, playing out over and over: a pair of reproachful eyes, a cascade of blood, the blank stare of a death mask, the crumpling of a body, its final collapse into the arms of the person who had almost died instead.

 

The sight of a dozen humans descending from the sky on Gear wires had never before brought Armin anything but relief, pride, and resolve. Now they brought him a fear that bit into him like a winter wind off the plains beyond the Walls. The revolver under his cloak, resting against his heart, had been a cold, reassuring weight. Until now. What the fuck good would it be against portable cannon?

“Captain!” he cried out over his right shoulder. “They’re here! Multiple enemies approaching from the right!”

He turned to face forward again immediately, hearing the _whoosh_ of gas but missing the sight of Mikasa and Levi ascending into battle. The air above and behind him filled with the roars of the cannon-like guns, the jarring clash of steel on steel, shouts and screams, and … heavy, wet noises. He didn’t turn around again.

“Damn it!” he heard Jean snap out. “More people are dying!”

 _No shit, Jean,_ Armin thought, keeping his eyes trained on the road and driving the horses as fast as he dared. He’d never beaten a horse in his life but he wished he had a whip with him right now. _They’re trying to kill us. Why aren’t you glad they’re dropping like flies?_

Then he heard the crack in Jean’s voice as it spiked from disgust and anger far, far up into the realm of fear.

“Why is this _happening…?!_ ”

_No. Oh, no. Please. Don’t freak out on us now._

Now Armin did turn his head, calling Jean’s name, watching him sit frozen on the floor of the cart. Armin’s stomach began to curl with fear — and flipped over when he heard Mikasa exclaim, “They’re getting around us!”

That was when he looked up to see a snarling face and the barrel of a cannon aimed straight at his eyes.

His heart had just lodged itself in his throat when the heel of Mikasa’s boot came down hard on the head of the woman who’d been about to shoot him. The cart shook under Armin as she tumbled down behind him. Jean uttered a choked-off cry of surprise before he leapt to his feet, trained his rifle on her — and bellowed, _“Don’t move!!”_

“Jean?!” _What the hell?_ Armin swung his head forward briefly to make sure the horses were on course, then backward again to gape at Jean. _**Shoot** her, for God’s sake! You know, like we were **ordered** to do?!_

And then, with horror, he saw the woman’s head come up. 

Incongruously, ludicrously, he thought, _She’s pretty._ She had wide grey eyes with long lashes, bow-like lips that were drawing back into another snarl, and a delicate nose that was dripping with blood. She thrust out her palms to balance herself against the floor of the cart as she rose.

 _ **“I said don’t move!!”**_ Jean screamed — _shrieked_ , Armin thought. He couldn’t see Jean’s hands on the rifle, but he could see Jean’s shoulders. They were shaking.

The woman’s right arm shot upward. 

Armin heard the ringing clang of steel cannon against steel gunstock, then the thud of the rifle as it landed in the street behind them. Then the unmistakable _ka-shak_ of a firearm being racked. A soft gasp from Jean. Mikasa screaming Jean’s name as she descended.

Armin had never before undertaken a serious action in his life without a great deal of contemplation first. There was no contemplation now. There wasn’t even thought. There was just his hand, reaching under his cloak; and his arm, rising until the barrel was level with the woman’s neck; and his thumb, cocking the hammer; and his fingers, closing on the trigger—

The next several seconds took several hours to unfold, all in silence.

As his arm drifted upward with the recoil, the woman turned to look at Armin. Her blood fountained out of the place where her throat had been. What was left of her carotid artery pumped out liter after liter, jetting over the edge of the cart, splashing Jean in the face, staining his hat and jacket and shirt. The dark-red fluid arced and curled out from beneath her chin with a strange, graceful slowness. Armin had another incongruous thought: the way the end of Mikasa’s scarf sometimes fluttered in a breeze.

The soldier’s eyes were huge in her face. They seemed to grow huger still as the skin around them went white. She was looking at Armin the way a dog might look at a human who had stopped playing with it, or the way Eren used to look at his mother when he couldn’t persuade her to let him go out and play in the rain.

Then she wasn’t seeing Armin anymore, because she wasn’t seeing anything anymore.

Armin had seen many people fall, many times, from trees or rooftops or the napes of titans. Gas ran out, equipment malfunctioned, trainees lost their balance. All of them had fallen much greater distances than one hundred seventy-five centimeters. Yet none of them took as long to land as this woman did.

Her head tilted back on her cervical vertebrae, visible through the red strings of meat that were what remained of her throat. Her arms seemed to float upward as her shoulders dropped and her torso followed. Her hands slackened, the cannon tumbling from both of them to the cart floor. Armin flinched, expecting the one she had racked to fire on impact, but it remained inert.

Her upper body rotated, one hip jutting out as though she were about to rest a package or a child on it. She almost drifted downward into Jean’s lap. His brow wrinkled in apparent confusion as he flattened himself against the rear wall of the cart. She collapsed, seemingly as slowly as a plant wilting, against his chest. His bloodied hat rose a little on his head, then glided off it, disappearing into the street beyond. 

Other than her open eyes, now as glassy as those of a porcelain doll, her face looked as though she were merely asleep. Blood continued to pump out of her neck onto Jean, more slowly now. Jean made no move at all, merely stared down at the dead woman in his lap, his mouth slightly agape, as though he couldn’t figure out how she got there to begin with.

Then Mikasa’s boots thudded against the floor of the cart, speeding up time again and bringing back the sounds of the world around them.

“Jean! Are you all right?” she shouted. Jean didn’t respond, merely continued to stare down at the body in his lap in something like mute amazement.

Mikasa thrust her blade tips into the wood of the cart floor. She seized the soldier’s body under the arms, dragged it off Jean, and let it drop. Quickly she stripped it of Gear and ammunition, ignoring the blood that coated her hands and splashed onto her clothes. Then she lifted it again and heaved it into the street. As it landed with a thump behind them, she crouched beside Jean and grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Goddamn it, Jean, snap out of it!”

Jean remained silent. Other than his head rising a little so that he was now staring dead ahead, he didn’t even seem to have registered that she’d relieved him of the corpse.

Mikasa backhanded him.

Jean seemed to jolt back to life. He threw a hand up to his cheek, rubbing the incipient bruise through the coat of blood, and his eyes flared with anger.

“Jean, get a fucking grip before you’re _killed!_ ” Mikasa yelled in his face. Armin couldn’t remember her ever using the word _fuck_ before. “Keep an eye on my blades. I’m taking the cannon.”

“Careful, Mikasa, she racked the one in her right hand!” Armin shouted.

“Yeah, I know.” She hooked one of the ammunition garters around her right thigh, then picked up both cannon, handling with wary respect the one that had been pointed at Jean. Immediately she ascended again; when she joined Levi she passed him the soldier’s left-hand cannon and the other ammo garter, and in exchange he gave her one of his own blades.

After another quick check on the horses, Armin turned around again and assessed Jean. He wasn’t in a daze anymore, but his throat was working, his hands shaking, his eyes darting left and right and upward.

“Jean. Take the reins for me,” Armin said sharply. “You can drive, right?”

Jean stared at him wide-eyed for half a second, then nodded. “Y-yeah. I can.” He sounded relieved as he stepped over the divider and sat on the driver’s bench beside Armin. Biting his lip to stifle a sudden searing burst of rage, Armin handed him the reins, braced his left hand on the divider, and leapt over it. He crouched down in the shadow cast by the cart wall, eyes angrily scanning the sky, the barrel of his revolver pointing upward.

He didn’t need to fire it again. Levi and Mikasa, who had cut down a fair number of enemy soldiers with blades alone, were now picking them off handily with the dead soldier’s cannon. As the cart careened toward the southeastern outskirts of Trost, where large buildings gave way to small ones and small ones gave way to open lots, the remaining pursuers fell back.

Mikasa landed in the cart again, Levi a second after her. Levi stared at Armin, still crouching with the revolver, then turned his head and noted Jean with the reins in his hands.

“Jean — you grew up in Trost,” he said. “You know how to get to River Street, right? The wharves with the warehouses nearby?”

“Yes, sir!” Jean said, a little too enthusiastically.

Levi turned back toward Armin. “Nobody’s been after us for five whole minutes. I’d forgotten what that was like. You can put the gun away for now, Armin. Nice shot, by the way.”

“Thank you, sir,” Armin said, vaguely aware that the words should have made him feel warm. He felt cold. It wasn’t the fanged cold that had seized him at the sight of the enemy coming down from the sky with cannon at the ready. It was more like the night mist that rose off the river to which they were headed, a chill that seeped into skin and marrow and took an hour in front of a fire to shake.

 

“Armin?”

He stirs, the five hundredth repetition of the soldier’s collapse fading from behind his eyes. Then he stirs a little more as his name is repeated. Groggily, he sits up, wincing at the stiffness of his joints. He’s somehow gotten his cloak wound about himself, but it hasn’t kept the damp cold of the stone floor from leaching into him, and he’s shivering. He wonders when he lay down and when he fell asleep.

He blinks in the light from the lantern in Jean’s right hand. Outside the penumbra of its glow, and that of another lantern at the far end of the warehouse, the darkness is total rather than near-total. Armin recalls that they arrived at least a few hours before sundown.

“How long have I been out?” he asks blearily.

“I don’t know, but we got here maybe four hours ago.”

In Jean’s left hand is a sack, the contents of which make variously shaped bulges in the sacking. His eyes flicker at random intervals between Armin’s face and the floor. “There’s food. I… thought you might be hungry.”

“Not really,” Armin says. Anything he’s eaten in the last day and a half is at the bottom of the cauldron, but he’s cold and stiff and he still feels wrung out, and the idea of eating anything at all is distinctly unappealing.

Then his stomach growls audibly. He realizes he’s thirsty as well. He sighs.

“Do you mind if I… eat with you?” Jean asks diffidently. Armin doesn’t think he’s ever heard Jean say anything diffidently before. Even if Jean hadn’t just brought him food, Armin wouldn’t feel right telling him to fuck off and leave him alone. But he imbues his reply of “Why not” with about as much enthusiasm as if Jean had asked whether he’d like a dose of the plague.

Jean sets the lantern down and makes a pallet of his cloak on the floor, the bloodied exterior face down, and sits. Though the rest of his clothes are of course still bloodstained, Armin notes that his face has been wiped clean. The bruise from Mikasa’s hand rides high on his left cheekbone, wide and purple.

“Sasha and Captain Levi went scavenging in one of the other warehouses,” Jean says. “It’s full of rich people’s food and vine. The owner ships it upriver, I guess.”

“Why’d Captain Levi go with Sasha?” Armin asks.

The corner of Jean’s mouth twitches. “Because Sasha’s not as good as he is at picking locks.”

He pulls a muslin cloth, mostly clean, out of the sack and lays it down between himself and Armin. Then he begins setting out the food on it. Several dried sausages, a generous chunk of hard cheese, a jar of what looks like preserved whole plums, and a large, heavy flask.

Armin grabs the flask, uncorks it, and takes a swig without asking first. Jean owes it to him. Between Levi’s and Sasha’s efforts there’s probably more where that came from, anyway, and if Jean wants it badly enough he can go back to the other end of the warehouse and get it himself.

It’s some kind of liquor, rather than vine; it burns going down. Armin coughs and splutters, then takes another, more cautious pull. It’s very good, once he’s become accustomed to the taste. Belatedly he realizes that it’s also quite strong, and his tolerance has never been high. As he sets the flask down he feels his head start to lighten.

“That’s… probably enough,” Jean says warily, picking the flask up and taking a few sips. “We’re not out of danger yet. We don’t want to be drunk right now, or hung over tomorrow.”

“You didn’t warn me how strong it was,” Armin says, taking one of the sausages and beginning to gnaw on it. It seems to be venison.

“You didn’t ask,” Jean replies, slightly peevishly, but Armin is starting to feel warm and relaxed and lets the snippy answer pass.

They eat in silence. The sausages and cheese are delicious. Armin wishes they had bread to go with them, but of course the residents of Sina wouldn’t dine on stale bread shipped in from the outer districts; they have their own bakers. The plums are also good, halfway between sweet and tart. They end up drinking the juice in the jar, too, because they’re thirsty from the sausage and cheese but neither feels like walking down to the other end of the warehouse to see if there’s something benign to drink.

After they’ve eaten all of it, Jean wipes his mouth and hands on the upward side of the muslin; Armin uses the unsoiled part of Levi’s handkerchief. Jean remarks, “Sasha found some tinned herring and pickled eggs in a crate at the front, where we came in. But who knows if they’ve been here for ten days or ten years. It’d be kind of ironic, wouldn’t it, if we survived… what happened today, only to die of the screaming shits by morning?”

Armin is satiated and still slightly tipsy, so he doesn’t give Jean a dirty look or set his jaw or grind his teeth. But he doesn’t laugh, either. Jean turns red and falls silent again.

After a few moments, Jean says, “I don’t think either Mikasa or Captain Levi is too happy with me.”

Armin thinks about all the sarcastic responses he could make to that observation and decides to make none of them. Instead he asks, with overly careful politeness, “Did the captain say anything to you about it?”

Jean shakes his head. “Nah. I think he took one look at my face and figured out that Mikasa got the point across. But neither of them are saying anything to me unless they absolutely have to.”

Armin thinks, _Can you blame them?_ Instead he says, without inflection, “Everyone’s tired and on edge. Mikasa’s never been chatty. And Captain Levi’s hard to read. If he has something to say to you, though, he’ll say it.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” Jean blows out his breath, then adds quietly, staring at the floor, “Armin. Thanks for what you did for me.”

Armin lets out his own breath slowly. After a few seconds he says, equally quietly, “I shouldn’t have had to.”

“I know.” Jean speaks the words so softly that, even in the echoing silence, they’re barely audible.

“You can’t _do_ that to us, Jean.” Armin can feel his anger returning, and his fear too; they aren’t inundating him yet, but their fists are pounding against the buffer of liquor in his blood. Speaking no more loudly than before, he lets his pitch rise and his tone sharpen. “That woman almost killed me. If Mikasa hadn’t been nearby she _would_ have killed me. And then you. And then Sasha and Connie. Why the hell didn’t you shoot her as soon as Mikasa kicked her down?”

“I… I couldn’t.” Armin can hear Jean’s throat tighten around the words. Jean buries his head in his hands again.

“You _have_ to,” Armin says, and now he does clench his teeth, speaking through them. “That’s part of our job now, no different than cutting down titans. You don’t do it, you die, and the rest of us die. Who would you rather save, some piece of shit pointing a gun in your face, or yourself? Or me?” He lets a beat go by for effect. “Or possibly Mikasa?”

Jean doesn’t answer for a moment. Armin can hear a sob catch in his throat. Despite having just woken up, he suddenly feels tired. So tired. He can barely hold it together himself right now; he’s got no comfort at all to offer Jean. Before he thinks twice, he snaps, “You know what else, Jean? I’m going to be seeing and dreaming about that woman bleeding out and falling for weeks to come. That was what I was dreaming about when you woke me. Because of you. That was _your_ nightmare to take on. I have enough of my own, thank you, and plenty more to come.”

Once the words are out, he’s not only shocked that he said them but at how corrosively bitter the last of them were. Jean is staring at him now. He looks not only ashamed for himself, but hurting for Armin. Armin can look at him only briefly because otherwise the empathy in Jean’s eyes is going to completely undo him.

He sighs again, rubbing his forehead and staring at the floor without seeing it. “Jean…” His voice is flat now. “If you can’t do it, just leave. Go. Desert. Take Sasha and Connie with you, if they want to go too. I won’t tell anyone. Not even Mikasa or Eren.”

There’s no immediate reply. When Armin lifts his head again, Jean’s eyes are wide and his mouth open. He asks incredulously, “Go _where?_ Where the fuck inside the Walls wouldn’t they hunt us down? Then torture us for information before they hang us?” He pales; Armin guesses he’s thinking about Sanes. “I don’t know what I’d be more scared of — getting tortured, or giving in and leading them to you.”

Armin closes his eyes. He must be tired, maybe drunk too, if he didn’t take all that into consideration before making the suggestion. A sheltered, urban boy like Jean _might_ be able to survive outside the Walls if he had Connie and especially Sasha along, but it’d be damned hard. And, even if they lived nocturnally and could thus avoid ordinary titans, what if they ran into Reiner, Bertholdt, and Ymir again? And what if there were more shifters than just the three of them?

“Armin,” Jean says, his voice cracking a little. “I don’t… I don’t want to leave any of you behind. If we all split up, neither half of us will ever see the other half again. Or know what happened to them. We’ve already lost so many people…” He trails off with an audible swallow.

Armin feels his eyes prick, his nose grow hot. He realizes that since the Battle of Trost he’s barely, if ever, wept. Now Jean, of all people, is going to make him cry. _Goddamn it._ He stares at the floor again, his throat working, hoping he doesn’t start visibly dripping tears or snot.

So he doesn’t see Jean reach out for him. A second later his face is buried in Jean’s chest, the stench of dried blood in his nostrils and Jean’s arms tight around him and face buried in his hair. He sniffles and returns the embrace just as tightly. His tears are leaking out onto Jean’s shirt and probably rewetting the dead woman’s blood, and he feels dampness between Jean’s face and the top of his own head.

“I’m such an asshole,” Jean says, his voice low and tremulous. “I couldn’t even tell you I admired you, that one time, without taking a fucking dig at you for all the times you leaned on Eren.” He laughs, the sound catching wetly in his throat. “How many goddamn times have I leaned on _you_ in the last few months? I don’t deserve to have you or Mikasa or the rest of the Survey Corps watching my back. I should’ve gone to the MPs. They have plenty of room for useless recruits.”

“Oh, fuck you and your self-pity,” Armin sobs, the sound rather muffled. “You’re not useless. You’re an idiot, you’re too sentimental, and you’re a huge asshole. But you’re anything but useless.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Jean mutters. “At least we agree on one thing.”

Armin tries to fight how his mouth twitches against Jean’s chest, then decides he’d rather be laughing than crying anyway and begins to chuckle. Jean starts laughing softly, too.

A few minutes pass. Then Armin whispers, “Just… don’t do that to me again. Please. I know I’ll end up killing more people. I don’t want to kill even one more than I have to. I’ve got your back, Jean — I need you to have mine. And everyone else’s.”

“I’ve got it,” Jean whispers back, splaying his palm against Armin’s back and pressing hard.

Neither of them hears the soft echo of boot soles on the stone floor until Mikasa has gotten close enough to see them well. Armin’s head comes up with a jerk, and Jean’s head follows almost fast enough to bump Armin’s. They back away from one another simultaneously, like a couple of trainees caught necking after lights-out.

Mikasa stares at them uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then her expression turns exceedingly neutral, and she says, “Captain Levi told me to come get you both. He wants us to stay close together, even in the warehouse, in case something happens and we need to leave right away.” She pauses. “There’s more food and drink, too, if you want any.”

Armin stands. He’s still stiff and cold from having spent so long on the floor, and he begins to stretch to get his blood moving again. “I could use some water. Other than that I’m fine.”

“Same here,” Jean says, gathering up the flask, sack, and muslin, then standing and stretching as well.

Mikasa eyes them oddly for another second, then turns around and heads back toward the front end of the warehouse. Armin picks up Jean’s lantern and follows her. They haven’t gone half a dozen steps before Jean falls into stride beside him. Within yet another half-dozen steps Armin feels a long, calloused hand around his own, squeezing it. He returns the pressure and blinks back a few leftover tears before he and Jean release their grip on one another.

**Author's Note:**

> [Kinkmeme prompt.](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/8414.html?thread=8360926#cmt8360926) Thanks to [undomielregina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/undomielregina) for her very prompt beta of this fic.
> 
> I went with a revolver for Armin’s gun because we’ve seen Levi training one on Pastor Nick in a previous chapter. Between the damage older guns tended to do thanks to the relative slowness of their bullets, and [the force of blood spray from a severed carotid artery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_squirt#Anatomy), I sense that, if anything, I’ve underestimated how dramatically the soldier would have bled out.
> 
> Regarding the “dig” Jean refers to having made at Armin: That was from Chapter 23, during the 57th Expedition. It is [frequently misinterpreted as homophobic, but it’s strictly about Armin’s capability.](http://papermoon2.tumblr.com/post/51607529972/what-was-jean-and-armins-conversation-like-in-japanese) So, yeah, Jean was being a dick there, but not in the way a lot of people think.


End file.
